Floods, fights and a fluid river: the Viennese Danube in the sixteenth century

Abstract

Alluvial rivers can show unpredictable channel changes and humans living along the river corridor repeatedly have to cope with the alterations of their physical environment. This was specifically the case in the mid-sixteenth century, when the Viennese were confronted with one major problem: the Danube River successively abandoned its main arm that ran close to the city and shifted further north. This was at the time when Vienna became the permanent residence of the Holy Roman Empire (except from 1583 to 1611 when it was moved to Prague), due to the Habsburgs holding the crown. Vienna was also the capital of the so-called Danube Monarchy, which came into being in the early sixteenth century. The city assumed increasing significance, being home to and hosting important authorities and persons. In particular after the first siege by the Ottoman army in 1529, the resource need for a complex fortification system was extremely high. This paper aims to highlight: (1) the morphological Danube dynamics together with floods and extreme weather situations in the sixteenth century; (2) the main actors in the transformation of the Danube; (3) changes of the river's course from 1550 to 1600/1650 and the consequences for bridging the river and the infrastructure as a whole; (4) the massive engineering measures that were undertaken in order to secure Vienna's requirements in the sixteenth century; (5) the question of floodplain settlements, and (6) the contested use of resources on the Viennese Danube floodplain.

14th-16th-Century Danube Floods and Long-Term Water-Level Changes in Archaeological and Sedimentary Evidence in The Western and Central Carpathian Basin: an Overview with Documentary Comparison

“…Based on documentary evidence, this mid and late 16 th -century flood peak was also detected on both the German (e.g. Lech, Isar, partly the Inn; see Böhm-Wetzel, 2006) and the Austrian tributaries of the Danube, and also on the Upper Danube itself (Traun: Rohr, 2006;Danube: Rohr, 2007;Glaser, 2008;Sonnlechner et al, 2013).…”

“…An interesting additional point is that the Vienna town hospital accountswhich contains information on the Danube floods disturbing or obstructing wood/timber transportreport on a Danube flood in 1548 (WStLA, Bürgerspital Bd. 26; for more source evidence and recent discussion on the consequences in Vienna, see Sonnlechner et al, 2013).…”

“…Then the flood series of the 1560s has to be considered: the great flood events, especially from 1567 (for Austria, see Rohr 2007), in the late 1560s (1568, 1569) and early 1570s (great flood events occurred almost every year: see Kiss, 2012b) caused long-term, irreversible changes, for example, in the Bratislava and Žitný ostrov area (e.g. lands swept away, reported in 1574: Maksay, 1959) and can be considered as floods of extraordinary magnitude (for destructions in Austria and Vienna, see: Rohr, 2007;Sonnlechner et al, 2013). Moreover, based on documentary evidence, we have to consider another peak of frequent and great flood events in the late 16 th and the early 17 th century, detectable in the Komárom area (see e.g.…”

“…Significant floods especially were detected in the late 1560s-early 1570s when almost in each year there were great and extraordinary flood events (see Fig. 1); but already the 1550s as well as the 1580s-1590s are important flood decades (Kiss, 2012b;Kiss and Laszlovszky, 2013; for great floods of the Austrian sections: Rohr, 2007;Sonnlechner et al, 2013; for the Danube at Ulm: Glaser, 2008; for major Bavarian tributaries: Böhm and Wetzel, 2006). It could easily happen that these flood events were combined with generally higher water-level conditions on the long-term, detected in the archaeological evidence (e.g.…”

Application of commensurability method for the long-term forecasting of the highest summer floods on the Danube River at Bratislava

“…Despite the many benefits of the river, after heavy rainfall or intensive snowmelt in the basin, catastrophic floods occur periodically, with flooding of densely populated flood plains, leading to property damage and sometimes losses of human lives (Böhm, Wetzel 2006;Romanescu, Stoleriu 2010;Pekárová et al 2013;Rohr 2013;Sonnlechner et al 2013;Pekárová et al 2014;Tenk, Dávid 2015;Blöschl et al 2016).…”